Halftime! And Jim Thorpe (1) vs. DJ Jazzy Jeff

So. Here’s the bracket so far:

Our first second-round match is the top-ranked GOAT—the greatest GOAT of all time, as it were—vs. an unseeded but appealing person whose name ends in f.

Again here are the rules:

We’re trying to pick the ultimate seminar speaker. I’m not asking for the most popular speaker, or the most relevant, or the best speaker, or the deepest, or even the coolest, but rather some combination of the above.

I’ll decide each day’s winner not based on a popular vote but based on the strength and amusingness of the arguments given by advocates on both sides. So give it your best!

13 thoughts on “Halftime! And Jim Thorpe (1) vs. DJ Jazzy Jeff

  1. 1912 Olympic medal ceremony:

    King Gustav of Sweden “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world!”

    Thorpe: “Thanks, king.”

    (Wikipedia says that exchange might be apocryphal, but what a story.)

  2. Jim Thorpe isn’t from Pennsylvania, and yet a town there renamed itself after him. DJ Jazzy Jeff is from Pennsylvania, and yet Will Smith won’t even return his phone calls. Until I can enjoy a cold Yuengling in Jazzy Jeff, PA it’s DJ Jumpin’ Jim for the win.

  3. With any knockout competition there is a plucky team or two that makes it through to the next round. I always hope they can continue their giant slaying routine, but in this case it is Jeff, not Jack and if you change the last letter he falls out of the competition anyhow. Sorry DJ JJ.

  4. DJ Jazzy Jeff won the first round because of (a) the paucity of arguments overall and (b) jrc’s comment: “From what I hear, Roth was only like the 14th coolest Jew at Weequahic High School (which, by my math, makes him about the 28th coolest kid there). And we all know DJ Jazzy Jeff was the second coolest kid at Bel-Air Academy.”

    Thorpe, on the other hand, got this comment from Tom: “Seeing as he could do everything better than everyone else, just by giving it a go, he would surely give an incredible seminar.”

    Now, it’s unfair to judge contestants on the basis of their previous rounds, but these comments really seem to sum up the difference between them. DJ Jazzy Jeff may have been No. 2 at Bel-Air, but Thorpe is No. 1 on the ground. Nor does this seem an occasion for a fluke upset. So Thorpe it must be.

  5. Assuming a DNA test verifies his Indian ancestry, I go with Thorpe. We need the diversity. It would be terrible to learn that Thorpe was only *claiming* to be Indian in order to establish world records in every sporting event.

    • Topical,but kind of very much not funny. Consider that Jim Thorpe’s career started at the Carlisle Indian School, an instrument of cultural genocide whose stated goal was to “kill the Indian, but save the man.”

        • Oops, involuntary truncation of ny prior comment! I was about to conclude with the observation that Jim Thorpe’s Native American ancestrey may have been unclear, yet he never prevaricated on matters of gender, unlike the current evolution of trans women. o wiymtg

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